She wanted Martin. Where was Martin? She felt more like a bird, at that moment, than a butterfly--like a bird that had flown too far from its nest and couldn't find its way back. She had been honest with Martin, all along. Why, the night before they had started on the street of adventure, she had told him her creed, in that dark, quiet room with the moonlight on the floor in a little pool, and had frankly cried out, "Who cares?" for the first time. And later, upstairs in her room, in his house, she had asked him to leave her; and he had gone, because he understood that she wanted to remain irresponsible for a time and must not be taken by the shoulders and shaken into caring until she had had her fling. He understood everything--especially as to what she meant by saying that she would go joy-riding, that she would make life spin whichever way she wanted it to go. It was the right of youth, and what was she but just a kid? He had never stood over her and demanded payment, and yet he had given her everything. He understood that she was new to the careless and carefree, and had never flung the word honest at her head, because, being so young, she considered that she could be let off from making payments for a time. She wanted Martin. She wanted the comforting sight of his clean eyes and deep chest and square shoulders. She wanted to sit down knee to knee with him as they had done so often on the edge of the woods, and talk and talk. She wanted to hear his man's voice and see the laughter-lines come and go round his eyes. He was her pal and was as reliable as the calendar. He would wipe out the effect of the reproaches that she had been made to listen to by Alice and Gilbert. They might be justified; they were justified; but they showed a lack of understanding of her present mood that was to her inconceivable. She was a kid. Couldn't they see that she was a kid? Why should they both throw bricks at her as though she were a hawk and not a mere butterfly? Where was Martin? Why hadn't she seen him for several days? Why had he stayed away from home without saying where he was and what he was doing? And what was all this about a girl with a white face and red lips? Martin must have friends, of course. She had hers--Gilbert and Hosack and the others, if they could be called friends. But why a girl with a white face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle? That didn't sound much like Martin.